


wake me up when september ends

by AngryPencilWielder



Series: Happy Ending Were Never Meant For Us [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Self-Harm, Suicide, i'm a monster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 19:36:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13688370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngryPencilWielder/pseuds/AngryPencilWielder
Summary: Ben Solo knew one day he would become a monster. The only way to prevent that future was to kill the monster before it could fully form.





	wake me up when september ends

**Author's Note:**

> MAJOR trigger warning for suicide/self harm.

_Summer has come and passed_  
_The innocent can never last_  
_Wake me up when September ends_

* * *

 

It was so quiet. Of course it was, it was far too later at night for anyone else to be awake. Or maybe it was morning now? That time when midnight bleeds into the early hours of the morning, long before even the sun begins to consider rising.

Either way, the temple was silent as Ben stood alone in the infirmary.

So quiet, except for the screaming in his head. He tried to ignore how his hands shook as he searched through the cabinets. Tried to ignore the blood seeping through his off-white sleeve and dripping into the ground. Tried to ignore the voice in his head and the endless ringing in his ears.

Finally he found what he was searching for, his trembling fingers wrapping around the glass jar. He read through the label, just to be sure.

Ben shoved the jar in his pocket, already occupied by an unused syringe. Task done, he turned and left the infirmary, bare feet padding silently on the ancient marble floors. He was nearly back to his room when he heard it.

“Ben?”

He froze, terror taking him over for a moment, before breathing out slowly and turning around. “What are you doing up Rey?”

“Had a bad dream.” The eight-year-old mumbled from her doorway. “What are _you_ doin’ up?”

“Just getting something to help me sleep.” He lied. (maybe, was it a lie? He would be sleeping, wouldn’t he?)

“Bad dreams too?” Rey asked, half asleep and peering at him through heavy eyes.

“Yeah, bad dreams.” Ben agreed. “Come on, let’s get you back to bed.” He grabbed Rey’s hand in his good one and led her back into her room.  
“M’kay.” She agreed, content to be shepherded back to her bed. Once under her covers, Ben made to leave the room, but Rey’s small hand shot out and grabbed hold of his sleep pants. “Stay until I fall asleep?”

A rare smile tugged at the corner of his lips, barely there and reserved only for Rey. “Sure thing kiddo.” He whispered back.

Rey yawned and snuggled into her blankets, the little Resistance pilot doll Ben had made her for her birthday a few years ago under one arm.

“I love you Ben.” She murmured after a few heartbeats, already nearly asleep once more.

Ben felt his heart lodge in his throat, the grief and fear suddenly overwhelming. _I’m doing it for her._ He reminded himself. _I’m doing it so I won’t hurt her._

“Love you too.” He managed to choke out. Force, why couldn’t she fear him like the others? It would make things so much easier if she didn’t love him. If he didn’t love her back.

“See you tomorrow Ben.” Rey whispered against the doll.

Ben swallowed and dug the fingers of his left arm into the wound on his right. “Yeah.” He croaked. “See you tomorrow.”

Any other time, Rey would have noticed his inner turmoil, but she was too far into unconsciousness to pick up on the crack in his voice.

Between one breath and the next, Rey was asleep and Ben was once again alone. Still he sat on her bedside for a while after, basking in her light, trying to memorize her features. Finally, after an eternity frozen still beside his only friend, Ben stood and slipped out of Rey’s room and across the hall to his own.

Once inside, he locked the door shut and collapsed on the floor, the tears he’d been trying to fight back finally breaking free. His pressed his hand against his lips to keep the sobs trapped inside behind his teeth. The contents of his pocket pressed uncomfortably against his thigh, reminding him what he had to do.

Steeling his resolve, Ben stumbled to his feet and made his way to his desk where he fell into his chair. With shaking hands, he took out a blank sheet of parchment and began to write, but the trembling of his fingers and the uncertainty of what he wanted to say meant he spent more time crossing out his message then actually writing.

It took several tries and a half dozen new parchment sheets before Ben had his letter written, and even then the page was stained with tears from his eyes and blood from his sleeve. Ben got up from his chair, leaving the note where someone would hopefully notice it on his desk, and curled into a ball in the corner of his room. He sat like that for a while, knees drawn up to his chin and silently sobbing. He dug his nails into the lacerations he’d made on his forearm earlier that night in hopes of driving out the darkness in his head.

It had gotten so much worse the past few years. When was once just a soft voice and night terrors had become an endless roar in his mind, the constant promise of death.

_You will fall._

They promised.

_You will betray them._

They whispered.

_And then you will be mine._

And Ben knew they spoke the truth.

The darkness was inside him, slowly corrupting like a disease, and eventually he would give in.

Unless he destroyed the disease.

And the only way he could do that was by killing the host.

From his pocket Ben withdrew the bottle of sedative and its syringe. This would be his death, and his salvation.

Ben had contemplated other methods, but he needed to be sure it would work, and this seemed to most fool-proof. He’d thought, just for a moment of using his lightsaber. Pressing it to his chest, just above his heart, and switching it on, but death by lightsaber was a warrior’s end, and Ben was no warrior.

No, simply fading away alone in the dark was what he deserved.

Ben unscrewed the lid of the jar and filled the syringe with the unassuming clear liquid. He’d chosen this one specifically for its potency. Even a small dose could stop a human’s heart. The amount he’d filled in the syringe was enough to put down a rancor.

Ben pushed the needle into the soft inside of his arm, thumb over the plunger, and realized he was terrified.

He didn’t want to die.

Ben closed his eyes, only to flinch when images of a blade of fire igniting inside his father’s chest played behind his eyelids.

A promise of what was to come.

 _“What do you think you’re doing boy?”_ Hissed the voice inside his head.

Ben’s eyes opened.

_I’m protecting them._

_“Who? The children who ridicule you? The uncle who fears you? The parents who threw you away?”_

Ben thought of Rey, her smiles, her laughter. And Ben thought of a woman with three buns and eyes like fire, calling him a monster, fighting him in the snow. Thought of how that fire would die when his saber would carve through her chest, years in the future, and Ben found his resolve.

_I’m saving the little girl that believed in me when no one else did._

Ben pushed the plunger.

The monster screamed inside his head.

The darkness crumbled and shattered inside him.

His heart slowed, then stopped, and for the first time in his life, Ben Solo knew peace.

 

* * *

 

 _Here comes the rain again_  
_Falling from the stars_

_Drenched in my pain again  
Becoming who we are_

* * *

 

The next morning a little girl with three chestnut buns hacked into her closest friend’s room and found him dead in the corner of his room, a needle in his arm and a smile on his face.

The girl’s screams woke the temple that early dawn. They rushed to the boy’s room to find her clinging to his cold body as she sobbed.

Later, on his desk among crumpled parchment and drops of dried blood, they found a note written in shaky calligraphy asking for forgiveness, warning about a creature in gold gathering forces in the Outer Rim, and the future he had sworn to prevent from coming to pass.

Scrawled at the bottom of the page, penned amidst bloodstains and teardrops, he’d written _I am free._

* * *

 

 _As my memory rests_  
_But never forgets what I lost_  
_Wake me up when September ends_

 

**Author's Note:**

> So because I'm a masochist, I come up with death!fics for fun, and because I'm an evil little shit, I decided to share my pain with all of you. Thus, we have the first (first!) in an anthology of Reylo death!fics. Happy Valentine's day? (Don't hurt me)


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